


Dark Horse

by toujours_nigel



Series: Conditions Best Suited [7]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel





	Dark Horse

There was a knock on the door just as Tom tilted the pot to pour out the last of the soup, and his hands slipped as he startle a little, sloshing soup onto the table-cloth. He sighed and dribbled the last of it carefully into the bowl, and replaced the pot. The soup had spread unevenly into the fabric, staining it a pale brown. Tom looked distressed as he moved the bowls to the bare half of the table, and began to roll up the cloth. “It will have to be washed at once,” he said, “I only hope it hasn’t set already. Andrew, will you see who that is? It can’t be Dave.”  
  
They had come in a little after dawn—late itself now, with winter settling in—and had slept away the morning; it was just past noon and the light a shock after the dim coolness of the kitchen. Andrew shaded his eyes for a moment and, as he grew used to it, said, “May we help you?” The man at the door was in naval uniform, his hat pulled down low, and held himself very straight: Dave sometimes got visitors like this, but very rarely and not to Andrew’s knowledge ever at home.  
  
The man looked up, and it was like looking into a mirror stained with age. He said, “You must be Andrew.”  
  
It was oddly disconcerting to look at him: his voice was a trifle deeper, he stood perhaps an inch taller, but in most things Andrew thought he would grow into that skin in time. He looked away quickly, almost hoping to see a different man when he looked back. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”  
  
“Ralph Lanyon,” he said and as Andrew was about to negate him, added, “It's a bit of a story. Is there anywhere we can talk?”  
  
After that it seemed a little futile to try and protest that he had seen Lanyon, and that he had looked nothing like the self-possessed, quiet man darkening his doorstep. He reached back for the doorknob instead, and tilted his head towards the hallway. “We can go up to my room.”  
  
  
It was brighter upstairs, the setting sun filtering in through the windows. It had been Cynthia's room, and he hadn't had the heart to put her things away in the trunk, or to take down the curtains fluttering uselessly against the heavier cloth of the black-outs. Tom had taken the room he'd used to live in before they'd gone to Bridstowe, and Dave had quietly and simply opened this up for him. Andrew thought at the time that it made him feel easier to know that it wasn't being left empty: Cynthia herself would never have stood for it. He wondered briefly how it must look to a stranger, quiet and feminine and delicate. He had never much felt absurd in it; rather it'd reminded him of his mother's room and more recently of Cynthia herself.  
  
He closed the door softly after himself and said, “I have met Lanyon, you realise. And spoken to him briefly on the phone.”  
  
The man smiled. “Was that you, that long ago? That _was_ me, but I'm afraid the man you've met since was an imposter. I'd ask you not to believe anything he's told you, but from what I gather from Laurie it seems that you have.”  
  
Andrew frowned, trying to remember what they had spoken about, beyond the formalities of Lanyon informing the hospital that he was bringing Laurie back. It would be a passable test for truth, if only he could recollect the details. It was too easy to hope. “What reason would he have to lie? On such a matter, at that?”  
  
And now the man looked almost embarrassed, before he smiled again. He smiled easily, as though it was easy to make himself likeable, and at the same time as though he had studied ways to make it so. He looked charmingly rueful, when he smiled. “I would ask whether any man was likely to give away such sordid secrets about himself to strangers, but since I'm about to do the same it hardly seems a good test for honesty. The man who passed himself off as me was quite connected to me some time ago, and when that ended, he blamed it rather unfairly on Laurie.”  
  
“He said all that because of _jealousy?”_ At nearly twenty, the child's skill for knowing a lie by the tone in which it is told had almost entirely deserted Andrew, but he felt it was all far too incredible. Too overwrought, for Cynthia's neat room, with the sounds of Tom moving about the house wafting up through the floor, and London outside the open windows.  
  
“Some of the stereotypes _do_ have some grounding in reality. Quite a few with Bunny, I'm afraid. He tends to take them to heart.” He doffed his cap, ran a gloved hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration and said, quite kindly, “He did a number on you, didn't he?”  
  
It was difficult to know what to say to that. To a man who had just called himself a homosexual it was impossible to lay bare the horror of being told that Laurie was a willing participant in acts of debauchery, especially since he'd been the supposed perpetrator. But Andrew felt dimly that he would be understood, however much he muddled through an explanation. He said, “He did not seem the sort Laurie would like to have as a friend.”  
  
“They aren't in any way close, so your surmise is quite correct. You believe me, then?” There was a new hardness to the voice where before it had been light and easy. “I should hate Laurie to lose a friend to a pack of lies my former boyfriend decided to spread.”  
  
Andrew said, easily as to a friend of long-standing, “I haven't liked thinking it was true.” Too late, he saw that it might be construed as an insult. “But I am glad it isn't him; Laurie thinks so well of you: I should have hated to think it was him all along.”  
  
“It takes a particular sort of mind to see filth instead of friendship; I'm afraid Bunny's rather teems with queer notions of the sort.” Lanyon smiled, more distantly now. “Don't bother saying you think it's alright: I shan't insult your intelligence by supposing you thought any of what Bunny suggested had the least to do with any kind of love, and for what it's worth Laurie and I have only ever been friends.”  
  
Andrew, who hadn't quite managed to admit that it was anything of the sort, or anything save an emotion to be categorically ignored in favour of cleaner things, ventured a smile of his own. “I hope you've better luck soon.”  
  
“If I'd any sense I'd chuck the whole notion.” He looked at his watch abstractedly. Andrew had noticed he didn't keep his hands in his pockets nearly as much as the other man had, but it would have been impossible to fake the injury: the stuffed fingers in Lanyon's glove stayed limp and seemingly separate from the rest of his hand when in motion; he had a long stride that swallowed the room, and a tendency to swing his arms a little. “You'll sort things out with Laurie, of course, he's been unbearable since this started.”  
  
Andrew said, “He left me a book, yesterday, I must have been asleep when he visited. It's the book you gave him, will you take it back?” It would be as good as a promise to write, he felt, and far more possible than writing a letter while Lanyon waited. “I have it here, with me.”  
  
Lanyon paused with his hand on the door. “Keep it; you're likelier to see him before I do.” This smile was kinder and distinctly less charming. “Take a minute, my dear, I know my way out.”  
  
  
After his footsteps had faded, Andrew drew the _Phaedrus_ from beneath his pillow and opened it to the first page. Soon, he would have to go to the kitchen and commend Tom on his efforts in making the soup and washing out the stain; then it would be time for dinner and setting out for the night; in between he must speak a little to Dave. And he would try to write to Laurie very soon, perhaps as soon as the next day. But for the moment it was easiest to let the thoughts swirl in his head and the words so many had thought by wash quietly over him.


End file.
